knife "Dance Macabre"

knife "Dance Macabre"

This author wants to convey the idea that death, although it does not paint anyone, is not so terrible. It brings rest, ease, oblivion. Diseases, grief, cares, and money leave her. In the end, all life is just a preparation for death.The shape of the blade also conveys the shape of the braid, the invariable attribute of death, and various ritual knives. That these knives were not cut off dandelions, of course, it is understandable without words. Skeletons around her Mistress dance cheerfully and fervently, make unthinkable pas. But the smoothness of the musical camp, according to which they skip, still leads them away, calms them down. The result is known - peace. In the meantime, you can have fun, sweep, knocking with knuckles ... And let all and always accompanies the music!In 1873, the attention of the composer Camille Saint-Saens was attracted by the poem of the poet and doctor Henri Casalis, who wrote under the pseudonym Jean Lagore. It bore the ironic title "Equality, brotherhood" and described the dance of skeletons in the winter midnight to the sound of the violin of Death. On this text the composer composed a romance, and a year later used his music for a symphonic poem called "Dance of Death." The lines of the poem of Casalis are prefixed to the score as a program:Zipper, Whack, Whack, Heel DeathHe beats the beat on the grave stone,At midnight Death is a song,Zipper, zipper, zipper, playing the violin.The winter wind is blowing, the night is dark,The lindens cry and plaintively moan,Skeletons, whitish, come out of the shadows,Ride and gallop in the shrouds of the long ones.Whack, zipper, zipper, everyone is fussing,The sound of the dancers' bones is heard.In those years, the orchestra "Dance of Death" struck unusual. The composer introduced a xylophone, designed to convey the banging of the bones of dancing skeletons. In the French edition of the score, it is explained that "xylophone is a tool made of wood and straw, like a glass harmonica". The participant of the orchestra is the solo violin, on which Death plays his devilish dance, according to the author's instruction - in the tempo of the waltz. The violin is set up unusually: the two upper strings form an interval of not a clean fifth, but a newt, not accidentally in the Middle Ages called "diabolus in musica" (the devil in music) ...The "Dance of Death" of Holbein was too well known in Germany; engraving sheets with this plot adorned the chambers of kings and shacks of the poor, for death for all is the same. Everyone, when he comes into the world, is already involved in a monstrous dance with his own skeleton. A proud princess performs in a ceremony, and death with a courteous gesture invites her to the grave. She tears the tiara from the pope sitting on the Roman throne. In an eerie "dance of death" everyone is involved - a judge accusing people, a merchant counting the proceeds, a doctor taking the patient, and a bride hurrying to the crown. Let the cunning lover carry away the noble lady - death is already knocking on the drum, celebrating his victory. But Holbein was sometimes indulgent. Here is a poor land-grader trailing behind a plow, but the skeleton even helps him, whipping up horses. Death bypasses the party and the beggar, sitting on a pile of rubbish. Is not that the great meaning? And what else can you expect from a painter, if his whole life was a "dance of death" - in an embrace with his executioner."Ekseption" with its rather original performance of "Dance of Death" accompanied the loss of connoisseurs in the game "What? Where? When?"